G8/G20

CIGI is pleased to announce the appointment of Miranda Xafa as a CIGI Senior Fellow, effective immediately. At CIGI, Ms. Xafa’s research will focus on sovereign debt crises and drawing lessons from the Greek debt restructuring.

Experts from CIGI's Global Economy program today presented their latest research, on addressing sovereign debt crises, to members of the executive board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and its senior research staff.

"The delay has clearly ‘broken’ the implicit contract underpinning the G20 spirit or contract whereby advanced economies would support a greater voice for emerging economies in global governance arrangements and the latter would take more responsibility as full-fledged stakeholders of the global economy,” says Domenico Lombardi, Director of CIGI's Global Economy program, commenting on a US budget package that left out funds for the IMF.

From time to time, calls are made for a “new” Bretton Woods, including in the dark days of late 2008, when the global economy was thought be perched perilously on the precipice of an economic abyss. At the time, it wasn’t entirely clear to me what, exactly, was being proposed. In the event, the crisis response mobilized by the G20 in late 2008 and early 2009 succeeded in stopping the economic dégringolade and, seemingly, refuted Hegel. But, while the global economy was stabilized by 2010, for most major advanced economics, the subsequent recovery has been tepid. As Brad DeLong estimates, absent measures to restore U.S. growth to its pre-crisis rate, the potential output lost as a result of the “Great Stagnation” could well exceed that of the Great Depression.

"What we saw in Europe after World War II was that economic integration can solve political challenges," says Domenico Lombardi, Director of CIGI's Global Economy Program, commenting on his visit to North Korea as member of a G20 delegation."That might be the lesson Korea can draw."﻿

"This is the first step of what a more open North Korea would be one day," says Domenico Lombardi, Director of CIGI's Global Economy Program, during a historic visit by G20 conference delegates, to the Kaesong industrial complex in North Korea.

The United Nations climate change negotiation process is in need of “a radical re-think,” to avoid future generations paying a heavy price for failure and inaction, according to a new policy brief from The Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI).

CIGI Global Security Program Director Fen Osler Hampson and Derek Burney examine how Vladimir Putin is taking Russia back to its old Soviet ways. "It will be 'Back to the Future' unless the West adopts a more principled and forceful stance with Russia. If Putin is allowed to succeed, the real losers will be democracy and the Russian people," they say.

Just as parents can learn from their children, Peter Blair Henry believes the world’s advanced economies should show some humility and take a few lessons from some of the third-world countries they once lectured on the fundamentals of economic growth. Drawing from his most recent book, Turnaround: Third World Lessons for First World Growth (Basic Books, 2013), Henry said in his public lecture at CIGI that the world’s “aging economies,” such as Canada, the US and much of Western Europe, need to “adopt or re-learn” three main principles of growth they once espoused to the third world: discipline, clarity and trust.

Those who believe in reincarnation, the idea that people receive their “just desserts” in succeeding lives, may wonder about Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott. Was he a sinner in a previous life, now repaid with the “wicked problems” of the Group of Twenty (G20) 2014 presidency? Or, was he a saint, rewarded with the unique opportunity to lead the G20 on a course to ensure Australian influence and long-term stable, sustainable and balanced growth for the world economy?